Enjoy A Holiday Cocktail High Above Kansas City This Christmas
There was a time when rotating restaurants high atop downtown hotels were a thing. In Kansas City, it was Skies, the rotating restaurant at the top of the then-Hyatt Regency Kansas City.
The iconic hotel in the Crown Center Complex. It closed ten years ago, but this holiday season you can experience the view from Skies once again as a winter wonderland-themed pop-up bar.
Skies closed in 2011 when the hotel became a Starwood property and was re-branded as the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center. Wikipedia says the space became the Sheraton Club Lounge, a private club.
That's not all that unique. Upscale revolving restaurants at the top of hotels have fallen out of fashion in the past couple of decades. Looking at the Wikipedia page for a list of revolving restaurants, a lot of them have closed.
Although, if you're looking for a revolving restaurant that's open, their list isn't all that updated. For example, their entry says Top of The Riverfront, the revolving restaurant at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis is temporarily closed. Nope, I'd say that hotel and restaurant are permanently closed.
Not to mention, even if you do find that throwback rotating restaurant experience, the restaurant may not be rotating anymore. It seems, for whatever reason, many places just decided it wasn't worth the maintenance to slowly give everyone a 360-degree view of the city while eating or enjoying their cocktail.
Skies will not be rotating when the Sheraton Kansas City at Crown Center announced they'll be using the iconic space and theming it into a holiday winter wonderland pop-up bar for the holiday season.
The hotel says, "Winter Skies is a seasonal-themed pop-up cocktail bar that will serve holiday cocktails in a festive setting of light, trees, and tinsel." Speaking of cocktails, J. Rieger Co. has designed several cocktails for the pop-up including one called Up On The Rooftop, along with a Fireplace Old Fashioned, and one called Kansas City Ice Water.
It's proving to be a hot ticket too, as the first four days they put the event on sale have sold out, and the Skies Kansas City Facebook page says they'll be announcing when they'll release tickets for future dates soon. It looks like the pop-up bar will be making tickets available for Thursday, December 15 - Saturday, December 17, as well as Tuesday - Friday between Christmas and New Year's Eve.
If this is something you want to experience I'd keep my eye on their Facebook page.